Collin County can’t expand its main highway fast enough to accommodate growth

Nanette Light, The Dallas Morning News

Tuesday

May 1, 2018 at 6:36 PMMay 1, 2018 at 6:36 PM

McKINNEY — City leaders know something has to be done to improve traffic gridlock on U.S. Highway 380 as more and more people pour into Collin County.

“The problem is that y’all are way behind. This should have been done 10 years ago,” Mayor Pro Tem Rainey Rogers said during a Monday night work session after the Texas Department of Transportation presented a draft list of possible freeway corridors. “We’re creating more traffic than your roads can handle.”

What remains unknown is exactly how a freeway meant to relieve traffic congestion could affect businesses and people’s homes and land, particularly in rural areas just outside McKinney’s city limits.

TxDOT spokesman Ryan LaFontaine has said the potential impact is still being studied. Getting answers is difficult, he said, because Collin County is growing so rapidly.

And that’s a critical missing piece that city leaders have said is needed for an opinion on the different scenarios. So far, Mayor George Fuller has said, residents have seen only alignments “with no context.”

“We certainly won’t dictate it, but we will have a resolution at some point giving our input at what we think most benefits our city,” Fuller said of the possible alignments.

Residents got an early glimpse of the possible freeway corridors during an open house last week when TxDOT laid out early options as part of its feasibility study on U.S. 380. Other meetings are scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday.

Five options for freeway routes were presented last week. No final alignment has been selected. A freeway isn’t the only option, though. Other possibilities include building grade-separated intersections that would preserve the highway’s current alignment while allowing drivers to bypass some major intersections. Another option is to do nothing.

“We’re not just stuck to these alignments. Based on comments, we can change an alignment and shift it over,” TxDOT transportation engineer Stephen Endres said Monday. “These aren’t set in stone. We found five, but they can be moved.”

The offered alignments have been more than a year coming as residents in the rural part of the county have anxiously waited for an indication of what a new freeway could mean for their homes and land.

Three of the five possible routes, for example, would plow through Kevin Voigt’s home just outside McKinney’s city limits.

“Not by it. Not in front of it, but through it,” said Voigt after the public meeting last week. Voigt bought the five-acre property when he moved to Texas from California two years ago to live on more space and for his three kids to attend good schools.

Traffic congestion isn’t just a problem in McKinney. Collin County is expected to double in size before 2030 and surpass the individual populations of Dallas and Tarrant counties by hitting the 3.5 million-resident mark by 2050.

And TxDOT projects that by 2040 Collin County will be larger than Dallas County was last year — but with far fewer freeways.

“The county is drowning,” council member La’Shadion Shemwell said. “Somebody’s going to have to take the lead and say, ‘OK Listen, we’ve got millions of people coming and something needs to be done.”

Endres said it’s difficult for the infrastructure to get ahead of development when the region has “minimum funding” for transportation.

McKinney council members have approved a resolution opposing conversion of U.S. 380 within the city’s borders into a freeway because development leaves little room for expansion. But Fuller has said that now all ideas are on the table.

TxDOT projects that five years from now is about the earliest construction might begin. The agency plans to analyze the data and feedback it’s receiving from residents and city leaders and come back in the fall for another round of public meetings with the alignments narrowed down.

Fuller emphasized the need for “better and clearer information” as the project progresses.

“There’s a lot of heartache over this project … a lot of controversy, a lot of conflict,” he said.

Next open houses

Tuesday: Open house at 6 p.m. and presentation at 7 p.m. at Princeton High School, 1000 E. Princeton Drive in Princeton

Thursday: Open house at 6 p.m. and presentation at 7 p.m. at Rogers Middle School, 1001 Coit Road in Prosper